


When There's Nothing Left to Burn

by littlehuntress



Category: Breaking Bad
Genre: Compound, Gen, Memories, Past Drug Use, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Starting Over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:48:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8886199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlehuntress/pseuds/littlehuntress
Summary: There are some things that'll be hard to forget.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SegaBarrett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/gifts).



For some odd reason those words were resonating in his head. A mantra he doesn't exactly believe in but that's gotten him through a lot recently. He asks for the strength to deal with the things he cannot change and of those Jesse has a long list. He carries ghosts with him, he's found they are heavy on his shoulders and there is not a single possibility to leave them at the door before he steps outside leaving the comfort of his house, of the sheets he burrows under and sleeps the hours and days away, hoping the clock fasts forward, willing his brain to erase every dream and nightmare that he knows quite well are actually memories, fragments of his life he hates and reduces him to nothing but a fresh wound. Jesse would give anything to destroy them.

More often than not he wakes up in the middle of the night -- or day when he's too tired and crashes on the couch or the floor in the living room -- with these images haunting him, Jesse would give anything to destroy them. They are too real and close for comfort. Sleeping is the only time of day when he can be at peace even for a moment. He runs away from a reality he hates. A world that is barren for him. Inhospitable.

Jesse knows is not the most healthy thing to do, but he would be lying if he said he is one hundred percent able to take care of himself. He is still learning. Taking baby steps. It's more than he expected in the first place.

At least the drugs are gone, once you have lost so much to the chemicals your stomach does this weird thing like your insides are collapsing when you remember the highs and lowest lows, and then your brain catches up and reminds you how fucked up he world is, how fucked up you are and the drugs turn into something vile and dangerous. 

Jesse loathes everything that is got something to do with the drugs. The people, the chemicals, the violence, the money. That world is no longer his. 

When he left the compound he never turned back, the roads suddenly were open before his eyes, an exit, an escape. He found a way out, the highways and avenues his new and only friends, miles of opportunities. Behind him he left the biggest mistake of his entire life: Walter White. He represented all the things he grew to detest about himself and the empire they both built and ultimately left them alone and covered in scars that took a long while to scab, and maybe they never will. 

Both turned into skeletons of former men who once were at the very top. Almost invisible for one brilliant second.

There was no win-win situation for them. 

Jesse amassed regrets and loneliness. His path paved by loss.

The least Mister White, his partner -- the irony of it all isn't lost in him -- could do was let him out, help him run, so he could have a second chance away from the mess they made. He's not grateful or anything. He can't be, he couldn't be. 

He was numb to the sounds and sights around him. 

He got his revenge. Mister White got what he truly wanted.

They both pulled a trigger that night.

Jesse is a runaway. 

He hides and sometimes pretends he never lived that other life. 

That night his history could be rewritten. The nighttime took him away. Shielded him.

It was better than being shackled and confined to the darkness. The sun stinging his eyes whenever he was left out. It's better to be a runner than a slave, scared of every moment not knowing if he would live one more day.

For as longs as the gas lasted Jesse kept on driving and looking forward, never back. He was a dog on a leash, an instrument of revenge only kept around because he was the owner of the right formula. His knowledge precious. 

Every single moment he was in Jack's hands a piece of him disappeared. Some days he thinks he almost lost everything that made him himself, but then he wakes up in a small house by himself in a place far far away from New Mexico. Albuquerque a mere point in a map. The heat long gone replaced by cold that stings and reminds him he is alive. 

He's still alive.

He can still breathe, and run and see a new dawn. 

Jesse was never much of an evil mastermind, ambition and stupidity swayed him, wanting to live fast disregarding the consequences of his actions, in the end his heart got the best of him. His guilt, his pain at feeling he could do nothing to change what was going on. He was a prisoner in more ways than one. 

When it was all over he was a half-man among a wreckage, desperate for something to hold onto. He did not know how he would go back to living. 

It took him months to even be able to look at himself in the mirror. 

He built the foundations of his new life on ideas hoping to find more stable ground. Occasionally shaky. The smell of sawdust and explosives made his teeth chatter, the sounds of guns firing made his skin crawl, the memories of his former life, of Mister White and the blue meth make him feel like he wants to run, run, run, until his sides hurts and there is nothing in sight but the horizon. 

Jesse's journey has been filled like a battleground full of bombs that can go off at any given moment, and you have to jump to avoid the holes because you can end up losing an arm or a leg or your life if you are not careful enough.

And Jesse been jumping and avoiding bombs for months.

He has chosen to keep on living, to distance himself as much as he can from the things that have hurt him so many times before. Though the ghosts still haunt him, he has found a different way of living. His car always ready and fast on the lanes, the sound of the tires screeching and the knot in his chest unfolding. Breathing gets easier because while not everything is forgotten he can try to take two steps forward. 

He is still alive after all.


End file.
